Meet the Artist

Elizabeth Vels views her “Making Life” as a means of exploring the Sacred within the everyday, seeking to find meaning in the cycles of trauma and beauty in her life. Her goal is to discover hope and renewal, and to recognize the extraordinary in the ordinary. Paraphrasing Yoko Ono, she sees making art as a survival strategy. Vels’s artist books are central to her process and play a significant role in her broader work, which includes painting, drawing, etching, stitching, and ceramics. These books function either as individual pages in a larger narrative or as stand-alone pieces that support a series or extend an idea. Notable past exhibitions include The Passover Project as guest artist at the Johannesburg Art Museum, Habitat of Psalm at the University of Stellenbosch Art Gallery and The Mamre Cycle, one of her 5 solo exhibitions at the Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg.

Her artist books encompass a range of forms: museum books, travel journals, autobiographies, plant books, and cryptic volumes that capture singular poetic impulses, such as Perfume of Wisteria, Incident in Hermanus, and Grandchildren’s Visit. Vels’s focus remains on texture, biblical metaphor, record-keeping and Art History. Many of these are in the Jack Ginsberg Centre for the Book Arts, Johannesburg.

Born in 1937, Elizabeth Vels worked as a student nurse, gained a Teacher’s Diploma, married, and had 2 girls. By God and Cecil Skotnes’s reference, enrolled at Johannesburg College of Art. Thereafter, became a lecturer in Painting and Art History. She has explored papermaking, traditional bookbinding, weaving and etching. She later obtained a National Higher Diploma in Papermaking and Master’s Diploma in Technology. 

@liz.vels_studio